Guest For Dinner

Photo Of Gator At The Door Draws Worldwide Notice

HILTON HEAD, S.C. — Richard Holinski's phone won't stop ringing. Seems like every time he picks it up, the voice on the other end has a different accent.

German. British. Minnesotan. He's heard them all in the past couple of weeks. And they all want to know: "Are you the guy who took that picture of the alligator ringing the doorbell?"

"That picture" has been all the buzz since June 2, the night Holinski captured with a telephoto lens the image of a 6-foot-long alligator standing on its hind legs at the front door of a neighbor's house.

Apparently the smell of teriyaki chicken that Robert and Roslyn Loretta were grilling in their back porch lured the gator from a nearby lagoon. Minutes later, the Lorettas heard a knock on their front door. When they looked out the window, there was the gator, its claw inches away from the doorbell. The gator quickly took off back to the lagoon.

On Thursday night, Holinski was watching a FOX local news broadcast at 11 p.m. when the photo aired. Two newscasters making small talk between segments began debating whether it was real.

"I said, `Aw man. They're calling me a liar,"` Holinski joked. "I'm really amazed that a picture can get you that much attention."

Indeed, attention galore. The photo and story has been picked all across the world -- from Melbourne, Australia, to Mumbai, India, to London -- since The Island Packet ran a story on June 7.

Radio broadcaster Paul Harvey covered the story Thursday. Two American tabloids, the Star and the Sun, have picked it up. It's even appeared in The Electric New Paper in Singapore.

"This is my 15 minutes," Holinski said. "The amount of attention has been overwhelming."

The attention has been a bit much for the Lorettas.

"People keep calling and calling," Roslyn Loretta said on Saturday. "It was just an alligator. We're ready for [the attention] to go away."

Holinski asked the Packet to donate money to a local animal charity instead of paying him. For him, it was all about the picture.

"I didn't take it for the money. I took it for the shot itself," he said. "I was in the right place at the right time."